


Family Portrait

by chrissy2



Category: Mötley Crüe, The Dirt: Confessions Of The World's Most Notorious Rock Band
Genre: Domestic Violence, Heavy drug usage, Other, the 1980s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 16:38:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7809307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrissy2/pseuds/chrissy2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mick waits until he is nearly black and blue from head to toe from The Thing before going back to Nikki's place. His place had gone to shit ever since his girlfriend left. It was trashed all the time, it smelled and Nikki hardly had any money left to go buy food or toilet paper. At least The Thing kept THEIR house in check. But as it turns out, Nikki needs Mick just as much as he needs him tonight.</p><p>(The title mostly inspired by P!nk's "Family Portrait". Also, I wrote this at a very late hour but had to get it out of my head. It may not make sense. I'll fix the errors later.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Portrait

**I**

Mick almost didn't call him that night, but he really wanted to get  _some_ sleep, _sometime_  that week, and sober. Nowadays, when he wanted to get sleep, no thanks to the The Thing - (or rather no thanks to himself, because after all, who was the dumb fuck that decided to stay with The Thing) - he had to fuck himself up, get disgustingly drunk. But tonight, he didn't want to deal with the puking, deal with another raging hangover. They just got worse with age.

Mick went out and sat on the front step, dialed Nikki's number and expected a  _the fuck you want, Mars_ on the other end.

"Hello?" This scrawny little fucker probably had the deepest voice he ever heard, deeper than a middle-aged, bulimic, chain smoker.

"..."

_"Hello?"_

"Hey, Nik," he forces out. "Uh, can you come and get me?" He asks with a bit of a lisp, as he had a busted lip from her - busts, actually, new and old.

Nik's response is just a nasally, "What?" 

Heroin, no doubt. The guy had done so many drugs - one after the other, two or three at once just to see how his body would react - it was amazing that he was still able to continue coming to the studio and act fairly normal. And you know what? The guys and him actually _preferred_ him fucked up. He wasn't a fucking dictator when he was high.

"Forget it."

"Mick?"

"Yeah."

"What's wrong?"

"I--nevermind."

"No, come on, man. What's wrong?" The guy could barely piece a sentence together.

Fuck it. "You mind if I stay with you tonight?"

"Uh--you mean, come over--you want to sleep over at my place? Sure. Sure, man. Uh, I'll be there. Sure."

Well, that was easy. 

 

**II**

Somehow, Nikki was able to drive to his place with his new car in tact, that dullness present in his eyes. (A part of Mick wondered if the bassist would even remember the call after he hung up and forget to come get him, leaving him there on the steps for the night. It has happened before, both to Nikki forgetting and to himself sleeping outside. After a while, she'd just lock the door and not let him back in. If he wanted in, he had to break the nearest window and he really did not want to pay for new glass. Again.) New, because every time Nik got a new ride, he'd crash it into a tree for the hell of it. It was the funniest damn thing to him. (What was this, number three?) He could just buy a new one. 

"Let me drive," Mick insisted.

"Uh, okay." Nik crawls over into the passenger seat pathetically slow, slower than himself. Mick was pushing middle age, but goddamn, your body should not be hurting this bad. The pains started in his late teens and they became more frequent and easily triggered as he got older.

When the bassist finally made it to the passenger's seat, Mick mumbled, "I'm surprised you actually kept it this long."

"What?"

"The car."

"Oh. Yeah."

 

**III**

Nik hardly looked at him the whole ride back. He just stared out the window, his eyes locked on the sky like Saturn and all of its glory was as visible as the moon. (For all he knew, that was probably exactly what he was seeing. You probably see things like that every night when your favorite drug is smack.)

He probably would have crashed the car sooner if he actually left his house every once in a while. Mick didn't know what was more worrying: Nik never being home or Nik never leaving his house. These days, he only left to go the studio. And if you tried to make him go anywhere else, especially to that fucking rehab center, he would go kicking and screaming or threaten to shoot himself with one of the uncomfortable amount of guns he had all over his house.

 

**IV**

When they get to his house, Mick opens the door and steps over burnt spoons and bullets and shattered plaques to get to the guest room. He mumbles a quick thanks and goodnight that the fucked up Nik probably doesn't hear before falling into the best sleep he's had in a long time.

 

**V**

Mick stirs around midnight. When his eyes adjust to the darkness of the room, he yelps and nearly jumps six feet into the air. At first glance, he thought he was dreaming. Then once passed that, he thought he saw a ghost or a demon standing before the bed, staring at him with intense green eyes, watching him sleep.

"What in the blue fuck, Nik!" the guitarist panted. "You scared the hell outta me."

Nik says nothing and stays where he is - stands where he _had_ been standing. How long he stood there, Mick wasn't sure. The only reaction he got of the man was seen in those green eyes, a shift in the gleam, the brow. "Nik?" He was looking down at him like he was a ghost or something. "Nik, you're freaking me out."

The next thing he knew, the bassist jumped onto the bed and latched onto him, diving face first into his abdomen and wrapping his arms around him. "Wha--" At first, Mick thought he was starting a fight. (He noted the time Nik went around biting celebrities in the stomach to show affection.) When he wasn't busy crashing cars or trying out two or three different narcotics at once or fucking random women, he was starting fights.

Mick's arms flailed and he struggled to get out of Nik's grasp. "--What are you  _doing,_ Nik?" 

It wasn't long before he realized that Nik wasn't trying to wrestle with him - he was  _clinging_ to him. He was trembling and sniffling and clutching to him, like a traumatized soldier running to the first woman he saw after a few days in the battlefield, be it his wife, sister or mother or a random civilian in the nearest bombed city.

He realizes what is really happening when Nik whimpers, his face in Mick's chest, "Dad..."

Then, the guitarist freezes where he is, stops fighting, stops struggling, letting the trembling man hold onto him tighter, letting him bring his legs up onto the bed with him to curl near as he could get to the fetal position in the awkward hug.

"Where did you go?" he seems to moan in despair, still not lifting his face from his chest. He was so close, Mick could _feel_ the words as well as he heard them. "Where did you go? Where did you go?"

Mick continues to stay still - some of the stillness made from the shock, his eyes wide and focused on the wall in front of him - planning on waiting the little episode out, whatever it was. He looks down at the man clutching to him, his own hands - old and shaking from age, blistered and calloused from riffs - awkwardly out to the sides, hovering. He looks down at him and wonders if this had happened before, wondered if this had happened when he was alone. After the first series of questions, Nik's back starts to heave up and down before exhaling a loud sob.

"Why did you leave me? Did I do something wrong? Mom didn't mean all those things she said..."

Mick's shirt starts to feel wet, and he can't tell if it is from the heaves of hot breaths or from the tears and snot. He didn't know whether to be annoyed by the ridiculous sobbing or to actually feel sorry for the guy. You only have one father and everyone needs one.

Then Mick's heart sinks into a strange hurt, choosing to feel the latter, and returns the embrace, an arm around his heaving back, the other stroking his dark hairs. "It's okay, son," he says. It's the craziest thing ever, but it slipped out before he could stop himself. "I got you. I'm here. I didn't go anywhere. You were just having a bad dream."

Nik inhales another long sniff. "Why did you do it, why did you do it, why did you do it, why did you do it..."

"I was confused."

"I hate you!"

"I don't blame you one bit."

"It hurt so much, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt..."

He tilts his head a bit, resting a cheek against Nik's hair. "I know, my boy. I know it hurts. And it's okay to cry about it."

"I feel stupid."

"Don't feel that way. It's alright. It was my fault, after all."

"I'm stupid."

"No, you're not. I'd like you to watch your actions sometimes, though."

"I'll be good!" the trembling man then says, finally lifting his head up to look at him with drenched eyes. "I'll be good, I'll be good, I'll be good. I promise. Please..."

"What do you need, son?"

Nik looks at him for a bit, not saying anything, then dips his face back into his chest.

 

**VI**

The last thing Mick could remember was slowly falling down onto his back, the bassist still clinging to him. He remembered holding him and rubbing his back, his hair, whispering heartfelt things to him until he found sleep again.

When he stirred the next morning, he felt a lot lighter, and opened his eyes to find the bassist gone. He wondered if the whole thing had been a dream, but sat up and realized he had fallen back to lay his head at the foot of the bed. When he laid back down, holding the clinging Nikki to him, he did indeed fall to the opposite end of the bed.

He laid back down and stared up at the ceiling, repeating last night's scene in his head until he realized they had to head the studio in an hour or so. He stood up, the usual pain shooting up his back, to get to the shower. Hopefully the bathroom was in good condition. He was too old for that 'not bathing' stuff.


End file.
